


don't know why we're heading west

by aiineslin



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Implied Attraction, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiineslin/pseuds/aiineslin
Summary: they'd picked up a really odd one this time round.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 194





	don't know why we're heading west

**Author's Note:**

> i was really fond of keechie  
> and by the end the season rounded out, the swedes also stuck in my mind  
> anyways this is just some writing practice to break the wall in my head  
> unbeta'd; apologies for any mistakes made, english is not my first language  
> title taken from giant rooks -misinterpretations

The new traveller they picked up was a strange one.

Oh, they had plenty of strange folk in their ranks – Destiny’s Children opened her arms to all, the outcasts and unwanted, those unloved by mainstream society. It was Scripture to grant succour to those in need, and when Keechie saw the blonde man making his slow way down the winding road, it was instinct that made him stop the van.

He knew the slope of those shoulders, the slowness of the ponderous walk. He had seen it before, he had seen it in himself.

When the man entered the van, Keechie had tried to make some small talk.

“I’m Keechie,” he had told the other. “May I know how to address you?”

The man had stared back at him, eyes glassy and unblinking, his mouth a dolorous, downturned line - and at that, Keechie knew to retreat.

Sometimes, he understood, the people who came to Destiny’s Children were a little more tested than the norm, and therefore, a little quieter, withdrawn, inclined to stay within walls.

It was alright, though. The man could travel with them for as long as he wanted; the Children had enough food and sleeping bags to share.

*

In the next week they travelled together, he did not speak.

The only thing that Keechie could pick up from him was that he liked animals. Somehow, the van had acquired a stray dog, a wretched thing rescued from a parking lot. 

This was how it had happened – the Children had stopped by a roadside McDonald’s.

(It was understood that sometimes, the cravings for unhealthy, processed food and copious amounts of sugar grew too overwhelming to withstand. Also, fast food was cheap and easily obtained.)

Keechie and the man – whom had been affectionately if unimaginatively dubbed Blondie – had drawn the short straw. And now thin plastic handles cut into Keechie’s palms as he followed behind Blondie, trying to keep pace with his long strides. They were headed for the van, when Blondie juked sharply right.

Keechie followed his trajectory. He was now moving with shark-like purpose, heading for the cluster of bodies huddled around _something_ at the very edge of the parking lot. In the darkness, Keechie could have almost missed them, but for their laughter. 

“Blondie, hey, no,” Keechie whisper-shouted, turning on his heel, scurrying after Blondie.

There were things, Keechie knew, that a person should turn a blind eye to – because it was late at night, they were two against four, there was cruelty that moved in the hidden corners of the world, oily and dark and Keechie and the Children had no defences against such cruelty when the Prophet was not around – they sang peace and spread love, after all. And how could you spread peace and love when you were all bruised up on the wrong end of a fist?

Blondie did not appear to hear, and indeed he had sped up slightly, so that Keechie had to break out into a ridiculous jog, and so they had come upon the little huddle, which resolved from shapes outlined in yellow light and darkness to men-boys.

Keechie knew their sort. Men-boys on the cusp of adulthood, acne still spattered across their faces. There was a lug wrench held in a fist. Blood dripped from the end.

At their feet, a dog. A wretched thing with ribs that stuck rickety-painful from its sides. Blood dripped from its mouth, its head. It curled on itself, wide eyes watching Blondie and Keechie and the men-boys.

“What the fuck is this,” said the one holding the wrench with a great and terrible calmness. “Fuck off, now. This ain’t none of your business.”

Blondie did not say anything, he looked at the dog, the dog looked at him, and all of a sudden, a plastic bag full of burgers and fries found itself launched at the face of the wrench-holding bastard, who went down in a shout of surprise.

“What’s it to you,” a brave one had yelled, and had gotten a kick to his face for his troubles.

He had gone down in a wail, and when his gormless friend had stepped up in his place, the friend had met a similarly brutal ending – a punch to his belly, hard and fast and wicked. The remaining one had decided to cut his losses and ran for it, disappearing into the night, leaving his friends prone on the concrete. The wrench-holding fellow had decided to play dead, it seemed, his eyes rolling wildly beneath the thin skin of his eyelids as he listened to the going-ons above his head.

Blondie scooped the dog into his arms, and looked back at Keechie.

Everything had happened in a matter of a minute, a masterclass in efficient brutality.

McDonalds lay scattered on the floor.

“There’s a first aid kit back in the van,” Keechie found his voice. He was proud that it did not tremble. “We could bandage the cuts up before we find a proper vet. And,” he added, looking down at the ruined food. “We need to come back out to get dinner again. Else the Children would have a fit.”

Blondie shrugged.

*

The dog had ingratiated herself quickly with the Children.

She was quick and clever, and learnt her new name easy enough – group consensus had decided to call her Baby, because well, they were Destiny’s Children, and she was the baby and best-pampered of the group.

She stuck closest to Blondie, though; Baby never did forget what Blondie was her rescuer. 

And so, the days passed, melting into shiftless weeks that blurred by. 

Life on the open road made it difficult to track down shower facilities. It was, Keechie knew, something of a blessing that they were making this great journey _now_ and not in the height of summer, where sweat would cling to their skin in great oozing droplets.

As it were, a week or two without a shower still made a man smell like ass.

Still, the encroaching cold made it difficult to find clean and pleasant shower facilities that provided hot water – or frankly, water that was warm enough to not make goosebumps rise on skin.

It took some luck, and a lot more asking to find a community centre that was willing to accommodate a troupe of ragtag, blue-clad fellows that wore starfish necklaces and had a tendency to break into song.

It was with great relief that the Children made use of those facilities – and god, it had truly been a while since Keechie washed with hot water.

Blondie joined them, of course.

He had stuck around for a lot longer than Keechie had expected him to – through a hitchhiker that had followed them into Albuquerque, a quartet of travelling nuns that had very good singing voices and a trio of rowdy teenagers declaring that they wanted to _find themselves_ by becoming rock stars and doing copious amount of drugs. When they left, they had stolen a pack of Sam’s weed.

It was the first time that Keechie had seen the man divested of his clothes, and Blondie had a good body, really – whippet-lean and mean in its wiry strength.

As Keechie brushed his teeth, he let his gaze drift over to Blondie.

There were scars that tracked across Blondie’s torso, a multitude of little scars and big scars, raggedy scars and clean scars.

When he looked up, Blondie was staring right back at him.

“Uh,” Keechie said. “We all have a past, don’t we?”

At that, Blondie scoffed loudly, and turned back to face the mirror, returning to his teeth-brushing with greater vengeance.

Dinner was awkward, for Keechie.

The scars stuck in his mind. They were _professional_ scars, ones that told a history, and one that was very bloody and miserable indeed. Blondie ate dinner with nary a change in his expression, but then again, his face rarely budged from its stolid neutrality.

When dinner was done and the Children had sung their good night songs and went about saying words of affirmation to each other, Keechie found Blondie, sitting at the top of the van. Baby slept beside him, her head in his lap. He was staring out into the night – it was something he did disturbingly well, Keechie realised. Stare, that is. And be very, very, intimidatingly still.

“I hope you know,” Keechie pronounced. “That I don’t judge you, for – for you know, being in a life of violence before you joined us.”

Blondie stared at him. Baby opened an eye, and stared at him too.

Keechie felt _extremely_ judged.

Blondie scoffed again, but this one was distinctly amused – and at that, some mild delight bubbled up in him, because hey, Keechie was one of the few who could discern the differences in emotional timbre in Blondie’s grunts.

“OK. Thank you.”

Keechie blinked. He dropped to sit down opposite Blondie.

“You’re _Swedish_?”

At that, Blondie’s lips twisted slightly.

*

Once it was established that Blondie was not in fact, mute – Keechie begun trying to incite _some_ form of proper verbal communication from him. He could understand English, that was for sure. He could definitely speak it. But maybe he would be more open to conversing in his mother tongue, and well, Keechie had a good head for languages.

Blondie, Keechie had decided, had a nice voice. Deep. Nicely sarcastic, when he deigned to speak.

Unfortunately, Blondie also happened to not like speaking too much, even when Keechie began trying to learn Swedish from a guidebook he had picked up at a gas station.

(What was it even doing there, anyways? Whatever the case, it occupied space between Mandarin for Dummies and 101 Spanish.)

“Hur var din dag,” Keechie said.

“Du var här med mig, du visste hur det gick,” Blondie would respond.

And Keechie would go flipping through the translucent-thin pages of his guidebook, bemoaning, “This is _not_ in the guidebook.”

Blondie would smile a little at those times.

Life was good, truly. Blondie made the world a little sweeter, sweet as it was already from his awakening by the Prophet.

He was also a strong deterrent to danger.

The Children being as they were, innocent and guileless in the nastier ways of the world, were sitting ducks for the predators of humanity.

It was lucky that they had Blondie and Baby, silent guardians against the pilfering hands that wandered a bit too close to the collection cans. He had a very – _menacing_ way of looking at someone, Blondie had, when he decided to be intimidating. 

One day, after a good attempt at collections, Keechie and Jill sat in the van, totting up the day’s take.

“You like Blondie a lot, don’t you,” Jill said, as she counted out dollar bills into neat stacks.

“I like all of the Children,” Keechie said briskly. “It’s a requirement, as I am the stand-in for the Prophet. I can’t not like anybody. And everybody deserves to be liked.”

Beneath her eyelashes, Jill gave him a look that could only be described as _Boy, what are you even saying anymore_ and Keechie felt extremely, deeply foolish, red steaming up from his neck and into his cheeks.

*

The Prophet was a kind prophet.

Keechie had read some books before. Scratch that, he had read many books, and listened to even more radio.

There were _cults_ out there, cults with a capital C, who when you entered them, took everything away from you, hollowed you out and poured all their teachings into you until you were nothing more but a glass-eyed doll filled to the brim with their words.

The Prophet did not seek to make the Children wholly his, he only told them his teachings, which were peace, love and kindness, and those were _good_ things – Keechie had long since decided, to strive for. They were meaningful things, much more meaningful than being trapped in a rat race.

But as these things went, most people were not understanding.

Sometimes, Keechie called his parents. It was always rather painful. But Ma did ever so like to know that he was still alive. And Keechie did not mind calling his Ma, even though Pa would inevitably take over the phone.

It had been two and a half months since he had called home, so he called them that day, when the Children were occupied in a Denny’s, and he had a minute to himself to slip out to the phone booth outside the restaurant. Blondie had followed him, and somehow or other, Keechie saw nothing strange about that. The other person that Blondie liked to be around was Keechie.

And it was easy, Keechie realised, to be around Blondie.

Something about the way he was so recalcitrant, really. The man was clearly uninterested in drama, or frankly speaking, anything that resembled normal social relations. He woke up, ate, sleep and played with Baby. Sometimes he cooked for the Children. Other times, he bore their meandering thoughts and discussions patiently. He was dependable.

And thus it was easy for Keechie to tell Blondie things he would not share with some of the lower-ranking Children. Concerns about finances, directions, bread and butter issues that plagued him – the Prophet made it look so _easy_ somehow, but Keechie was not the Prophet with his blessings, and Keechie needed to think of ways to keep his people alive and fed on the open road.

Blondie had ideas, sometimes. But most times, Blondie listened, and that was enough.

He was doing listening now, leaning against the outside of the phone booth as he watched Keechie talk to his Ma.

A few pleasant minutes passed, as always. And then Pa swooped in. And the conversation took a twisty turn into misery, as it always did.

“Please understand, Pa,” Keechie said into the phone. “I’m not – please don’t say that. Pa. Please. Look, I’ll have to go now if you’re being this – this rude. Oh.”

He put the phone, gently, back into its receiver. “He hung up on me,” Keechie said, almost to himself. Beside him, Blondie stirred. There was a trace of sympathy in the man’s stoic face.

“Family is difficult,” Blondie said. There was an ocean of unsaid emotion behind the clipped words, a well of quiet exhaustion, shot through with longing.

“Yes,” Keechie said. He stepped away from the phone, rubbing his hands together, and cleared his throat loudly, clearing away the burn that had crept into it, the sudden stuffiness in his nose. “I wish.” He looked at the blue and orange van, a shining, bright thing, lit up by the glow of a setting sun. “I wish.”

He swallowed the words back down.

Blondie looked away.

Before they returned to the Denny’s, Blondie handed a washed-out, slightly raggedy handkerchief to him.

“Eyes,” Blondie said.

Keechie nodded, and ran the handkerchief roughly over his eyes. When Blondie took it back, he made no mention of the wetness that stained the blue cloth, simply folding it back carefully into his pocket.

*

It was the burden of all who attempted to spread teachings, to suffer from persecution.

It could come from misunderstandings, from people who stood so firmly against love and freedom and tenderness, or it could simply stem from plain old ignorance, ingrained and close-minded and bitter.

This was one such moment.

They had begun circling since the Children set up, a duo that became a trio, a trio that became a quartet, and now there were five who eyed the Children with nasty, condescending expressions, made awful noises over their songs and looked far too long at the collection cans. 

When Peony had tried to offer one of them a pamphlet, he had spat at her. After that, Jill had pulled her away.

There were always such people, wherever they went. You learnt to avoid them, sooner or later, for the Prophet espoused the virtues of turning the other cheek.

One had to note that this philosophy is not so carefully followed by others – and these men were part of those others.

It came as no surprise that they begun moving closer and closer to the Children as the day wound down, and Keechie told the more fragile ones to walk on ahead, to remove themselves from a potential _situation_.

The collection can he held under his arm was slick in his sweaty grip.

“Nice, isn’t it,” said a tall, tall man. He was clean-shaven, with dull, hooded eyes. “Being able to make money from begging.”

“We appreciate,” Keechie said quietly. “The generosity of those who have opened their ears to our Prophet’s teachings.”

“Fuck is that sissy-boy,” said the man derisively. “Fuck is that starfish chain yous wearing. Was that bought with money you tricked from honest, hardworking people?”

And all of a sudden, Keechie found himself staggering back and falling, the collection can tumbling from his arm. The world narrowed down into a red-hot spot of pain concentrated in his nose. Warmth dripped from it, down and over his lips.

A foot headed his way. Keechie closed his eyes shut; he did not want glass shards in his eyes.

When glass did not shatter across his face – he opened his right eye, just a little.

The man had stopped, halted by Blondie, who looked disturbingly unruffled, all slicked-back hair and for a moment, the briefest of moments, Keechie swore he saw Blondie smile as he looked upon the assailant, and for all the world he looked like a great white shark ready to rip into its prey.

What followed was a story that he had seen before, told in a near-empty McDonald’s parking lot, brutality executed in clean, clear lines.

The men cleared out sharpish, for all that they were brutal and imposing, because predators recognised another predator when they saw one, and Blondie oozed a scornful, easy cruelty. 

Around them, murmurs, exhalations, little susurrations of delight and surprise, and beneath – a tinge of fear.

Blondie did not seem to hear them. He turned on his heel and paced back to Keechie. The light that lit his hair into a silvery glow made his expression difficult to see.

“Th-thank you?” stuttered Keechie.

Blondie looked down at him, sighed, and held out a hand.

“Axel,” he said.

“Axel?”

“My name.” There was the trace of a smile in Axel’s voice. “You may call me Axel, Keechie.”

Keechie took the hand, grasped it, and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. He brushed himself down, and he said, a smile growing slow and bright and joyous over his lips.

“Nice to meet you, Axel.”


End file.
